Tag: digital media

If newspaper design had a motto, it might be: “Stick to the format. The design and layout is the brand.”

And that remains true today with iconic titles of newspapers rendered in familiar fonts and layouts that are distinctive in their own right. Think of how familiar and distinctive a title like USA Today is when you flip through the pages. The color, the layout, the way the headlines grab your attention—all part of the brand.

Newspaper publishers, by and large, have always understood this. But the notion that printed newspapers’ design should never deviate from the template is being challenged, and it’s because of digital and mobile publishing and the rising cost to paper. Still, that hasn’t stopped publishers from experimenting with their print product.

More than a year has passed since the New York Times’ newsroom published “Journalism That Stands Apart: The Report of the 2020 Group.” The report was intended to define “the newsroom’s strategies and aspirations” and laid out arguments for initiatives like nurturing more reader participation; creating more visually stimulating, multimedia journalism; and committing to greater collaboration between the newsroom and the publisher’s product teams.

Overall, the report provided interesting insight on what the Times was planning for its future, so we couldn’t help but wonder what other newspapers had on their agenda for 2020. E&P reached out to several newspapers across the country and asked them to share.

What variables do you think will have the most influence on how well your newspaper performs—in both revenue and audience—in the coming two years?

As they now become digital publishers, newspaper organizations have a glut of audience insight into what both readers want and advertisers want to know.

“Newspapers are among the most trusted brands for providing valuable and useful content. Further, they have long-standing relationships with huge numbers of consumers,” said Peyton Marcus, practice executive at Digital Media Solutions, Infinitive. “But they must learn to think along the lines of truly digital and 100-percent audience centricity if they are to thrive as ad-driven businesses. That means seeing more clearly the links between the technology they use to run the business, how it impacts the customer [and] audience experience, and how they use data to manage their businesses.”

In buying or selling targeted digital advertising, it’s prudent to know the target (in this case, the newspaper publishers’) audiences, and among them, advertisers’ prospects. Marketers may wish to target members of the community based on demographics alone, but may be more easily compelled by greater insight into preferences, interests, geography, chronology, behaviors, hot buttons, shopping histories, and other information afforded by digital media.